Peek into what it's like to get hired at Google with 10 insights from the tech giant's head of HR

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Last year, Google's senior vice president of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, peeled back the curtain on Google's management style and culture with the publication of his book "Work Rules!"

Google uses an internal tool called qDroid that arranges a list of interview questions depending on what type of position is being filled. The questions are behavioral, dealing with past scenarios, and situational, dealing with hypothetical scenarios.

For instance, an interviewer may ask a behavioral question like: "In the past, how have you obtained and incorporated customer feedback into your organization's planning and service standards? Give specific examples."

He doesn't advocate unstructured interviews, in which the company asks questions like, "What was the last Halloween costume you wore?" citing research that found structured, job-specific interviews are the best predictors of job performance.

3. An unbiased group of people makes final hiring decisions.

After an interview, an independent group of reviewers goes over all the interviewers' feedback and has the final say on whether to bring the candidate on. This strategy helps ensure that the interviewers' biases don't affect hiring decisions.

4. Managers encourage employees to set stretch goals — and don't expect people to meet them.

Google uses an internal grading system called OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results.

Each Googler sets a goal and three key outcomes that result from achieving that goal. At the end of the quarter, they get a grade between 0 and 1 on each key result.

The idea isn't to receive a perfect score of 1, but to land somewhere between 0.6 and 0.7. If you score a 1, your objective was too easily achievable. If you score between 0.6 and 0.7, then you were probably thinking big, and setting what Bock calls a "moonshot" goal (a.k.a. a stretch goal).

6. Managers have less influence than peers on performance reviews.

Bock explains that managers often have a distorted view of their employees' performance because people try to present their best selves to their bosses.

That's why peer feedback is a key part of performance reviews at Google. Googlers and their managers select a group of peer reviewers, including employees who are junior to them; then each reviewer is asked to list one thing the person should do more of and one thing they could do differently.

7. Googlers are rated on a five-point scale, from 'needs improvement' to 'superb.'

OKRs (see No. 4) are the first part of the performance review process at Google. The next step is having managers rate employees on a scale from 1 to 5. Peers also contribute their feedback (see No. 6).

Finally, groups of managers meet and review all their employees' tentative ratings together. This process is designed to reduce managers' bias because they have to explain their decisions to each other before determining final ratings.

8. The company pays employees 'unfairly.'

Bock writes in "Work Rules!" that "there have been situations where one person received a stock award of $10,000, and another working in the same area received $1,000,000," because the second employee was a better performer. (He admits that this situation isn't the norm.)

In his view, it's more fair to pay a top performer significantly more than an employee with the same job title who produces less value — so a better name for this strategy might be "pay unequally."

9. Meetings begin and end with goal-setting and debriefing.

To get the most out of meetings, Bock recommends a simple exercise: If you're a manager, ask each of your employees shortly before the meeting how they plan on making the most of it, and once it's done ask them what they took from it.

If you're an individual employee, you can do this on your own too, to keep yourself focused.

10. Employees rate their bosses on nine behaviors, including their bosses' tendency to micromanage.

A few years ago, Google started distributing a semiannual "Upward Feedback Survey," a checklist that employees use to anonymously rate their managers.

One of the nine behaviors employees judge their managers on is "They do not micromanage by getting involved in details that should be handled at other levels."

Other behaviors include giving actionable feedback, sharing relevant information from senior leadership with the team, and communicating clear goals.

According to Bock, these surveys have resulted in better managers. The average overall score for managers across Google rose from 83% in 2010 to to 88% in 2012, and the lowest quartile of managers' overall score rose from 70% to 77%.